To Become A Ninja Cat
by Mononoke-hime x sukai kurora
Summary: The ninja cats Denka and Hina were originally orhpaned kittens without names and without a place. This changes when the meet Uchiha Sasuke, who helped them to carve their path to become ninja cats. A two-shot.
1. Their Origins

_Their Origins_

Two small kittens were lost. Their soft downy fur was damp with rain. Their small bodies shook with cold, and wails escaped from their mouths. Their mother had died. Their mother had died protecting them from a rabid dog bent on destroying them. Even at their young age, the two littermates could sense bloodlust ozzing from the dog. Their mother hadn't said a word to them - she too had been gifted with the speech of humans - as they ran away with their tails flying behind them. The last thing the kittens heard was their mother's snarls as the dog came closer, and then the hisses and barks of a fight. Somehow the two kittens had been unabble to move as they watched their mother struggle under the dog's weight. It was when the dog's sharp teeth clenched over their mother's throat did they continue to run away. The snap of her neck still echoed in their ears even as they ran farther away.

Rain fell thickly on their pelts. It fell into their eyes, and it seemed as if tears were pouring down their faces. That didn't make them stop running. The two motherless kittens ran until they couldn't run anymore, exiting the alley that they had escaped from. Shaking with cold, the kittens walked, careful to not slip on their paws. It was then that they started to wail. Their wails echoed in the vacant area they were in, causing their sounds of grief to be lost in the crying sky. Eventually the two kittens stopped moving all together. Through their sharp eyes, they could see structure with steps sheltered from the rain. The two small tails dragged in the rain as sibling's bodied continued to move. Then the brother and sister lied down close to each other on the steps and washed away their grief with sleep.

It was the sun that woke them. The kittens blinked their eyes open to the bright sunlight. Unlike last night, the sky was now clear and blue without a cloud in the sky. Their fur was half-dry from the rain, and only puddles remained from storm on the night their mother had died. The male kitten was the first one to move from the structure. He sniffed curiously, noticing that there was no trace of human scent. _Strange, _he thought. Like their mother, the two kittens had been gifted with human speech. She hadn't been able to explain to them why they could speak when other cats couldn't. _"I don't know why our gifts were sent to us, my children, but that means that we serve a higher purpose in life than our other kin. We were ment to be..." _Their mother hadn't been able to finish her sentence because the dog had come. Now she would never finish what she wanted to tell her children. The male kitten was soon joined by his sister. They both stared at the huge structures before them, all vacant, without any signs of humans. _They look like houses that other cats go into, _the male kitten thought as he noticed the eaves and wooden sliding doors. All of the houses looked alike, including with the red and white symbol on them.

"It looks like a fan, _niisan_," stated his sister. Her creamy fur was now soft again. She had her tail around her paws. Suddenly she looked closer at the symbol, squinting her eyes. "Uchiha..." she murmured.

"What?"

"Our mother said that she served the Uchiha Clan when she was young," his littermate stated. Her eyes grew wider as she spoke. "She said that the Uchiha were the strongest shinobi in the village, where we were born."

"Konohagakure." The male kitten remembered the village which he and his sister had been born in. Where were the Uchiha? The was no human in sight. "Something happened to them," he whispered.

"They were massacred," stated a voice behind them. The two kittens jumped at the sound of the raspy human vioce. It sounded as if he was only a few feet away from them. The kittens turned around and a ten year old boy stood before them. The human was tall even as he crouched to down to meet their height. Black-blue hair framed his face, and it spiked at the top. He was wearing a short black t-shirt with a high raised collar and white shorts. His hard gray eyes looked at them with mild reproch.

"What are you doing here?" The boy's voice sounded hard as his eyes as he looked at the small kittens. "I know you can speak," he added when the kittens remained silent.

"Our...mother...she was..." For some reason, under the human's gaze, the male kitten couldn't form his words correctly. Surprisingly, the human nodded.

"I buried her," he told them. His eyes suddenly had a glassy look to them as he told the kittens the fate of their mother. "I scared the dog away; he won't be coming back." The boy looked up at the sky, the sun shinning in their eyes. "Your mother is buried in my backyard, near the small pond and porch."

"We couldn't find our way back!" The male kitten's sister now spoke. Again, the human didn't seem to be surprised to be talking to a talking cat. "We didn't know where to go." The human's expressions didn't change from the glassy look in his eyes. "Can we see her?" The human looked at them for a moment and nodded.

"Come," he said. He stood and started to walk away when the male kitten realized something.

_"Omae no namae wa desu ka?" What is your name? _The human turned and answered. There seemed to be pride in his voice when he spoke.

"Uchiha Sasuke." He paused. "Who are you?"

Suddenly the leaves from the trees blew from the branches. They landed on their paws as the male kitten spoke. "We don't have names," he explained.

The boy named Sasuke walked towards them again. He crouched down to the littermates.

"You shall be known as Denka," he told the male kitten, "and you will be known as Hina." He stepped back and whispered half to himself. "My mother told me that she had a ninko when she was an active kunoichi, but I never thought I would meet her children. She told me theyy could speak and had the intelligence of humans." His eyes found them again. "Let's go."

Silently, the newly-named Denka and Hina followed their new friend, Uchiha Sasuke.


	2. Their Path

_Their Path_

Denka and Hina followed Sasuke's light footsteps. His footsteps were soft and quiet, more like a cat than a human. Denka looked at the human with black-bluish hair. _He named us, _thought the cream-furred kitten as their path continued. Moments ago, Denka and his sister had been orphans and unnamed. A sudden thought entered his mind. Had their mother had a name? To both littermates, she was simply _okasan_. According to Sasuke, his own mother had a ninja cat when she had lived. Did that mean that all three were connected? Denka kept his questions to himself as his sister walked with him. Again, Denka noticed that Sasuke's footsteps echoed their own subdued ones. _"Kare wa neko, niisan." _Hina's almost silent whisper echoed in Denka's sensitive ears, but somehow Sasuke heard them. His feet abruptly stopped, motionless. The two watched anxiously as his fists clenched and unclenched. Denka could feel hate seeping from his body. _What happened? _He thought as Sasuke continued as time went by. _What's wrong? _Suddenly Sasuke's fists unclenched for the final time and he spoke.

"When I saw your mother's body…torn into pieces…I was immediately brought back to the time when my family died two years ago." The boy turned to them with his eyes hard with evaporating anger. "They were killed by my…_niisan_ to measure his strength. I couldn't protect my family. I ran away, just as you did with your mother. You couldn't protect her." Denka felt his heartbeat shudder as Sasuke's voice continued. He was speaking the truth. He and Hina had run away instead of defending their mother, had had protected them from all dangers on their path. At the corner of his eye, Denka could see that Hina was trembling from nose to tail-tip. Sasuke watched them handle their guilt without expression. "That doesn't mean you can't avenge them, Denka, Hina." His eyes didn't waver from them. "I am going to be strong enough to kill my brother, and you…can be strong enough to defend each other. It only depends on your path." Then Sasuke turned away from them and didn't speak anymore to them. The two kittens ran to keep up with him.

Denka and Hina slowed down to walking pace as Sasuke walked into his backyard. They were a couple paw-steps behind, and they watched as the human placed flowers on the lone grave by the pond. The earth was freshly turned, soil staining Sasuke's pale hands as he placed the flowers on the grave without a stone marker. The human stood there, looking at the two kittens' mother's last resting place. They were unable to read the ten year old's thoughts. Denka and Hina remained motionless until they both jumped from the porch to their mother's grave beside Sasuke. The two motherless kittens didn't say anything. Was there anything to say? Their mother had died protecting them from a bloodthirsty dog bent on eating them. Denka's thick brown tail curled around Hina's own. _"You can be strong enough to protect each other." _Sasuke had said that._"I don't know why our gifts were sent to us, my children, but that means that we serve a higher purpose in life than our other kin. We were meant to be..."_ But… how could they become strong? And what had their mother meant to say to her children?

"Sasuke," Denka whispered. The human looked down. "How can we be strong if we're not human? Our mother was saying that cats like us – cats that could speak – had a higher purpose in life than our kin right before she died. But…how can that be?" His eyes found Sasuke's and the dark gray eyes were surprisingly warm.

"My mother once told me that she had a ninja cat named Sayuri. She was a cream-furred cat like you with brown splotches that resembled lilies. She could talk like you, and fight." Denka's and Hina's eyes were wide. "My mother, Uchiha Mikoto, and yours, Sayuri, were partners in battle until my mother married. My mother never forgot the brave _neko _who was always by her side. She used to tell me stories about Sayuri when I was young." Now Sasuke's eyes transformed into a determined glint. "You can become a ninja cat like she was, although you're young to begin training. Ninja cats don't even acquire their names until their training is complete."

"Then why did you give us names?" Denka asked with curiosity.

"I believed in you from the moment I saw you two," Sasuke said simply. "You two were born to follow your mother's path." He started to walk away from their mother's grave when Hina asked him a question.

"What happened to the dog?"

"I killed him." There was no remorse in Sasuke's voice, and Denka's only feeling was gratitude.

* * *

Their training began some time after that. Sasuke had told them that their tutelage would begin under Nekobaa, who had trained their mother to become a ninja cat and others generations before her. Sasuke hadn't said a word to Nekobaa as she explained what the two kittens were getting into. Their training would be much like a human ninja's, only it would be under a shorter span of time. When she asked why Denka and Hina wanted to become ninja cats, both said they wanted to protect someone. The Nekobaa nodded and didn't say a word, as if she knew who they wanted to protect. Denka and Hina remembered only the diligence they made in training with Nekobaa. It was around that time that Sasuke himself graduated from the Academy, and both full-fledged ninja cats surprised him with a visit. The human had gotten taller in the last two years, and now a Konohagakure headband was around his forehead. They had grown as well too, and now wore small kimonos around their bodies. Although Sasuke didn't say it, Denka and Hina knew that he was proud of them. They all paid respects to the ones most important to them before they were taken away from them. To Sasuke and Denka and Hina, that person had been their mother. _Okasan… _Denka thought, _I promise to protect my sister and the person most important to me, the one who made us take this path, the one who made us believe in ourselves, and who we'll always be for._

_ Hina and I promise to protect Uchiha Sasuke, your master's son._

_ Always._


End file.
